Femoral artery: course from groin to knee, femoral triangle and deep branch

Where does the femoral artery run?

Rest your fingers lightly at the front of the groin, where the thigh meets the trunk. Can you feel a pulse? The femoral artery runs just beneath.

It continues the external iliac artery from the abdomen, taking the name femoral artery where it passes under the inguinal ligament. It runs obliquely down the inner front of the thigh, passes through the gap in the adductor magnus (the adductor hiatus) in the lower third of the thigh, and becomes the popliteal artery behind the knee.

The femoral triangle

With the muscles shown, the artery is visible only near the groin, in the femoral triangle, bounded by the inguinal ligament above, the sartorius laterally and the adductor longus medially. Inside it, from lateral to medial, lie the femoral nerve, artery and vein, often remembered as NAV. The great saphenous vein joins the femoral vein here. Below the triangle the artery passes under the sartorius into the adductor canal, which is why it disappears from view.

The deep artery of the thigh

A few centimetres below the inguinal ligament the femoral artery gives off the deep artery of the thigh (profunda femoris), whose perforating branches wind around the back of the femur to supply most of the thigh muscles. The main trunk mainly carries blood on to the leg and foot. The level of this branch varies, and textbooks give a range of about 2–5 cm. The trunk below it is sometimes called the superficial femoral artery, a mainly clinical term not used in the anatomical terminology.

Name and terms

Femoral means of the femur or thigh, as in femoral vein, femoral nerve and femoral triangle. The Latin is arteria femoralis.

See it in the app

The femoral artery is superficial at the groin and then dives under muscle, which a single drawing rarely makes clear. In the 3D anatomy app teamLabBody you can show only the vessels to follow it from the groin to the back of the knee, then add the muscles to see where it is covered. The femoral vein and deep femoral artery appear in the same view. Cross sections are available with the PREMIUM plan.

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